This month, the popular photo-sharing site Flickr expanded its hosting services to video. So far, nearly 400 videos have been geotagged from China, which you can view by clicking on the map below:
Flickr video limits users to posting 90-second clips. From CNET:
The company sees the videos in effect as “long photos,” moving snapshots people take now that digital cameras (except SLRs) can record video as well as still images, said spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten Neilson. The hope is to populate the site with “authentic” videos, not clips from last night’s TV shows, and Yahoo will police the site for violations of the terms of service, added Flickr product manager Shanan Delp.
So far, most of the videos from China have been posted by non-Chinese. Here are some examples:
“Sound of Tibet” from Buzia, in Lhasa:
“Summer Palace,” from Peder, Dane in Beijing:
In 2007, China blocked access to Flickr, prompting netizen outrage and workarounds. That anger has continued, reported Howard French for the New York Times in February:
Growing numbers of others are becoming increasingly resentful of restrictions on a wide range of Web sites, including Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace (sometimes), Blogspot and many other sites that the public sees as sources of harmless diversion or information. The mounting resentment has inspired a wave of increasingly determined social resistance of a kind that is uncommon in China.
